In 1982 The Sunday Times saw a movie that gave them a nasty shock asking the question should movies like this be allowed, that movie was SS Experiment Camp. Lacking their own personality scum newspaper The Daily Mail saw an opportunity to act as a moral guardian and get a lot of attention in the process singling out a series of movies and demanding that the government did something about it. Each day saw the Mail pick up another movie, and gave them the opportunity to rant and rave about it. Bowing to demand the government and the BBFC (British Board Of Film Classification) acted to stop the pressure that had been laid firmly at their door. The result was proper classification of movies and the initial banning of 70 or so movies, calling them what we now refer to as Video Nasties. The Bogey Man was one of these original video nasties.

Having already bought up the subject of scum it’s time to move onto director Ulli Lommel a man who makes current director hate figure Uwe Boll look like a saint, as well as a brilliant director. Lommel was a talentless director who saw a window of opportunity marrying Dupont heiress Suzanna Love. She wanted to be an actress as much as Lommel wanted to be a director, and using her inheritance Lommel fired out a string of bad movies, none of which made any money in a short period of time. One of the worst of his movies was The Bogey Man (which I’ll get onto in a minute) rather sadly for Love, no sooner had her cash dried up than Lommel dropped her off in the nearest trash can in search of his next cash cow.

Despite the name Ulli Lommel all of the director’s movies were set in America, and American themed; The Bogey Man was set in an American farming community and bragged the legendary John Carradine as one of its stars, although the actor only appears for a few minutes. Also in the movie is Ron James an unusual but popular American comedian. It goes without saying that Suzanna Love appears as the movies leading lady.

Starting in the past Lacey (Love) and Willy (Nicholas Love, the brother) are watching their mother making out with her boyfriend. Having been discovered Willy; in what seems rather perverse is gagged and tied to a bed so the couple can safely get back on with their fun. Young Lacey goes to her brother Willy with a big knife, cutting him free. Having got free, Willy heads for the bedroom stabbing his mother’s boyfriend to death. Its here that the movie flips on 12 years to the present (well 1980) and the arrival of a letter stirs up some past memories.

I was annoyed from the movies offset, having watched Willy freed he is seen walking down a corridor knife in hand rather like Michael Myers in Halloween. The difference being is that Willy at this stage is probably 8 or 10 years old, yet somehow the knife is raised to almost 6 feet in height. This is just the first in a chain of inaccuracies and bizarre behaviour that makes the movie some of the worst viewing I have seen for some time.

The effects and horror if you can call it horror are hysterical, one woman cuts her T-shirt open before stabbing herself in the throat, blood pouring out like someone has literally turned on a tap. Another woman finds a piece of mirror and shortly after the sink in front of her bursts into flames forcing her to fall over backwards. The most annoying kid in the movie gets caught in a shutting window, his fate a little blurry, Best of all a piece of glass from a mirror flies straight into Love’s eye, nobody seems to notice this not even Love herself, despite the fact that the shard of glass is bigger than her eye.

As was almost compulsory for a Lommel film, and you can view this how you like I guess Love is stripped down to her underwear, did he at one time take pride in his wife? Or was it something else, perhaps humiliation that was on his mind. It was said that everyone around knew that there was no love in the relationship, everyone except love that is.

The whole movie is really badly pieced together and for the most part nonsensical, it’s a real amateur job. Love is dubbed with each scream, which adds a real comedy element because while Love at the time of filming was obviously in her twenties this is the scream of a fifty year old. While Lummel takes the movie off after every popular genre horror movie you can imagine, the house Love and her family live in bears a striking resemblance to the Amityville house, with those little corner attic windows. But it’s Halloween that gets the best references, and is singled out time and time again.

Having seen the movie in its uncut form, I find it a little difficult to understand why the movie was frowned upon originally cut before release by Vipco back in 1981, before being banned (but unsuccessfully prosecuted by the department of public prosecutions). There is no graphic gore, nothing that would frighten anyone older than five, and to be honest far too clumsy to be offensive in anyway shape or form. The movie turned up uncut on the Vipco label again in the mid 1990’s.

I love my horror movies, I particularly enjoy watching stuff that at some point (or we still are) we were not allowed to see, but this movie just baffles me, because unless I am mistaken being bad has never been a good enough excuse to ban a movie, or have I missed something?

The Bogey Man is available in the UK for a few pounds being as the company releasing it Vipco ceased trading in 2007. In the US the movie has been released on a double disc under its proper title The Boogeyman with the movies sequel Return Of Boogeyman, neither DVD has any special features. The movies should also not be confused with the 2005 movie of the same name.